Thursday, July 11, 2002

Have laptop, will post. Will eventually post something substantial, but
I'm still getting set up.

In the meantime, a quick thought:

There are several salient differences between the questionable
business dealings of the Clintons and those of, say, Bush or Cheney.
First, the current White House occupants were certainly seeking advice
from a better (or at least higher) class of advisor; Arthur Andersen may
not trump Jim McDougal now, but things were different at the time,
as Cheney attested personally on that Andersen promo video.

Which was reflected, in a way, in the outcomes: the Clintons lost money.

But one thing is the same: as we live in a government of laws, not
men, these guys can't be allowed to use their occupancy of government
offices to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions, as
the Supreme Court ruled in the Paula Jones case. To cook up some
invented, specious reason for treating this stuff any differently would
call into doubt not only the correctness of that decision, but the
value of precedent itself --- the basis of the Supreme Court's
authority to bind other federal judges.

And they wouldn't want to call that into question for transient,
partisan political advantage. Would
they?